Nontoxic Roach Control

Hey Mr. Green,
I live in a row house in the Capitol Hill Historic (read: very old) District in Washington, D.C. My next-door neighbor just found her residence swarming with cockroaches. She called an exterminator, who advised her to warn her neighbors that spraying her roaches will send them scurrying to the houses on either side, suggesting maybe we should also hire him. I do not want a toxic house. Neither do I want cockroaches. If her bugs migrate, is there a green way to deal with them? -–Patricia in Washington, D.C.

Hey Patricia,

Don’t panic. Stay on the line. We’re here, on full cockroach alert, ready to talk you through this crisis.

I know cockroaches well, having coexisted with them for some years in roach-friendly climes and structures. One of the more terrifying critters I have ever seen was an albino cockroach peering up with beady red eyes from a crevice in my kitchen table—surrounded by a streaming, squirming swarm of its brown brethren.

I survived, and so will you.

Pesticides should only be used as a last resort. Your first line of defense is scrupulous cleanliness. Scrub everything well. Don't leave food out, not even a crumb; rinse the bottles and cans you plan to recycle (roaches love to wade in reeking beery backwash) and place them outside as quickly as possible. Eliminate surface moisture, especially around all pipes, vents, conduits, etc. Roaches thrive in damp, dark places, and openings around pipes are one of their favorite routes. The cabinet under a kitchen sink is a roach’s Buckingham Palace.

After every surface has been scrupulously cleaned and dried, get rid of all clutter, in which roaches love to retreat to plot their next foray.

Podcast: Eating Green on a Budget

"Hey Mr. Green: My wife and I would like to eat organically, but we are of modest means. We also live in a small apartment, so we can't grow our own food. Any ideas?"

Click here to listen to the answer!

You can also subscribe to Mr. Green's podcast.

Podcast: Beauty products

"Hey Mr. Green: I'm curious about preservatives typically found beauty products like methylparaben and propylparaben. Some sources state that they are harmless, and others say that they're harmful. Which is it?"

Click here to listen to the answer!

To BP or Not to BP?

Mr. Green is busy on his world-wide publicity tour for his new book. In the meantime, here's a Mr. Green classic column from May 2007.

Hey Mr. Green,
If BP is your "best" choice for gasoline brands, you must have your head in the oil sands. Its high-risk industrial operations in Texas City killed 15 workers and injured 180 in 2005. Does BP contribute to Sierra? --Konrad in Park Ridge, Illinois

Hey Konrad,
I'm well aware of this inexcusable slaughter of petroleum workers, which was mentioned--along with plenty of other black marks on the company's record--in the Sierra report ("Pick Your Poison") that put BP in the "top of the barrel" category. That's why I said picking a better oil company was about as dicey as dancing with Vice President Dick Cheney on an oil slick.

These are huge and complex companies, and a large number of factors informed our analysis. Yes, more than a dozen BP employees died in that Texas City incident, but many people have been--or will be--killed because of global warming, as it causes the spread of tropical diseases and increases the intensity of storms. In contrast to BP, which has long acknowledged that something has to be done about global warming, ExxonMobil refused to even admit that climate change was happening until this February. Before that, Exxon had been very active--and successful--in debunking global warming, thereby forcing a delay in doing anything about it.

It's downright grisly and depressing to try and weigh the fatalities, pollution, and other ills caused by one petroleum provider against another's. Which is why we need to greatly step up the development of less homicidal and less ecocidal forms of energy.

Environmentally,
Mr. Green

Pox on Fox

Mr. Green is busy on his world-wide publicity tour for his new book. In the meantime, here's a Mr. Green classic column from August 2007.

Hey Mr. Green,
My whole family had embraced the concept of compact fluorescent bulbs (because they are so efficient), but a negative report from Fox News about their mercury hazards has us a little confused. Can you respond to our concern? --Carl in Center Moriches, New York

Hey Carl,
Thank you for calling my attention to this hatchet job, which I never would have noticed because I try to avoid the right-wing contrivances that Fox peddles as fair and balanced.

The people at Fox News are either brain-damaged from huffing mercury (they do seem to have a fondness for the highly toxic) or they have unscrupulously cherry-picked their facts. (In their sniping about the rules to replace incandescents with compact fluorescents [CFLs] "either adopted or being considered in California, Canada, the European Union and Australia," it's surprising that they overlooked the bulb-replacement programs in Cuba and Venezuela. That would've given them a fine opportunity to present compact fluorescent bulbs as part of a communist takeover.)

This classic example of enviro-bashing is full of flaws. First, the Fox writer trots out one report of one environmental bureaucrat's overreaction to a bulb breakage to make it sound like a busted CFL will turn a house into a Superfund site. The fact is, CFLs do contain mercury, but nowhere near enough to provoke panic or evacuation. If you break a bulb, you can do the cleanup yourself, without renting a moon suit or contacting authorities.

The EPA advises the following treatment:

1. Open a window and leave the room for at least 15 minutes (to let the mercury vaporize).
2. Remove all materials (i.e., the pieces of the broken bulb) without using a vacuum cleaner. You don't want even a small amount of mercury lurking in your vacuum. To do so:
   • Wear disposable rubber gloves, if available. (Never touch the bulb pieces with your bare hands.)
   • Carefully scoop up the fragments and powder with stiff paper or cardboard (you don't want the stuff to get on your broom or dustpan either).
   • Wipe the area clean with a damp paper towel or disposable wet wipe. Sticky tape, such as duct tape (yet another use for the versatile material!), can be used to pick up small pieces and powder.
3. Place all cleanup materials in a plastic bag and seal it. If your state permits you to put used or broken CFLs in the garbage, seal the CFL in two plastic bags and put into the outside trash (if no other disposal or recycling options are available). If your state doesn't allow this, consult the local hazardous-waste authority for safe-recycling information. Some hardware stores will also accept old bulbs; to find a recycler near you, try Earth 911, or (800) CLEAN-UP, for a location near you.
4. Wash your hands after disposing of the bag.
5. The first time you vacuum the area where the bulb was broken, remove the vacuum bag once done cleaning the area (or empty and wipe the canister) and put the bag and/or vacuum debris, as well as the cleaning materials, in two sealed plastic bags in the outdoor trash or protected outdoor location for normal disposal.

So much for that part of Fox's story, but I'm not quite done with calling them on their hokum. So read on, if you wish. The Fox piece chides environmentalists for contradicting themselves by promoting fluorescent lightbulbs while having "whipped up so much fear of mercury among the public that many local governments have even launched mercury thermometer exchange programs" and going "berserk at the thought of mercury being emitted from power plants."

Yes, as Fox notes, a fluorescent bulb contains around 5 milligrams of mercury (although some brands, such as Philips Lighting, claim their bulbs have as little as 1.23 to 3 milligrams). What Fox conveniently doesn't bother to mention is that a thermometer can contain 140 times as much mercury as a fluorescent lightbulb, making concern about these instruments eminently reasonable. Nor is it exactly going "berserk" to worry about mercury from power plants. Coal-burning power plants emit 50 tons of the stuff every year, around 40 percent of the total mercury emissions in the United States.

Since residential lighting accounts for about 5.7 percent of our total national electricity consumption--about half of which is generated by coal--creating power for home lighting releases about 1.4 tons of mercury every year. And since incandescent bulbs account for about 88 percent of all bulbs, they are responsible for emitting around 1.2 tons of mercury a year.

Let's imagine for a moment that all 4 billion residential lightbulbs have become CFLs, each one with an average life span of 5.5 years (the minimum for EPA-approved bulbs). That means we'd have to change about 727 million fluorescent bulbs a year. At five milligrams of mercury per bulb, that adds up to about four tons of mercury. Since fluorescents use only 25 percent as much energy as incandescents, installing them in all houses would decrease mercury emissions from power plants by 0.9 tons a year.

So even in the incredibly unlikely scenario that every single dead bulb were smashed, and its contents released into the environment, switching to CFLs would yield a maximum 3.1 tons of mercury each year--the 4 tons in them minus the 0.9 tons of emissions they offset. (If all bulbs used were the longer-lived models, with a life span of nine years, the net emission would drop to 1.9 tons annually even if not a single bulb got recycled. And as lower-mercury bulbs came online, the net release would drop even more.)

Fox simply ignores the fact that people don't have to throw away all those burned-out fluorescents in the first place. About 25 percent are already being recycled, just because the government requires businesses to do so. If consumers were better educated about compact fluorescents, they would recycle more of them, as they have learned to do with other materials. If we created an economic incentive--a stiff deposit on CFLs, for example--recycling rates would vastly increase, just as they have with cans and bottles in states where container deposits are required.

Of course, by focusing on mercury, Fox also fails to note that even the shorter-lived fluorescents would eliminate about 100 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants alone, and an equivalent amount of other pollutants. That's something to weigh heavily even against the heavy metal mercury.

Environmentally,
Mr. Green

Getting the Mercury Out: Part II of What Is Turning Into a Very, Very Long Series

Hey Mr. Green,
Since we have been using mercury-containing fluorescents since the 1940s, the relevant question would seem to be whether it's easier to contain mercury released from a power plant or in our solid-waste stream? —Jerry in Jamaica, New York

Mr. Green answers:
Hey Jerry,
Yes, if done strictly, controlling emissions from power plants would clearly be the most effective way to bring about a large reduction in the amount of toxic mercury in our air and water. Around 48 tons of mercury are emitted each year from power plants in the United States. The EPA has announced a goal of cutting this down to 15 tons by 2018. However, the agency's plan involves a cap-and-trade system critics say will actually not reduce mercury in some areas at all, and almost two dozen states are working to pass their own stricter regulations.

Total human-caused mercury emissions in the United States have declined considerably, thanks to stiff regulations and changing technology. We're now emitting around 115 tons total annually, down from 220 tons in 1990. Emissions peaked at twice this level in the 1950s, when they were ten times higher than in the 19th century.

This is all very good news, the kind of news environmentalists ought to crow about more. (Seems to me that we sometimes get so caught up in dealing with new messes that we don't demand enough credit for cleaning up the old ones.) But we do have a problem with compact fluorescent lightbulbs, because no mercury is good mercury. What we need, in my opinion, is much clearer point-of-sale information and more-prominent information on bulb packaging about the dangers of mercury and the importance of recycling.

As I've noted before, if all home lighting used in the United States were fluorescent, the mercury in dead bulbs would add up to around four tons a year. (Of course, the enviros-are-sissies dudes are in such denial about environmental problems they'll tell you that's such a small part of the total it's not worth worrying about--then down a shot of mercury with a DDT chaser to prove their point.) But because a lot of total mercury emissions are made up of just such "small" parts--3.5 percent from cement plants, 4.5 percent from hazardous-waste incineration, etc.--we neglect any part at our cumulative peril.

Finally, although we know what a major environmental nuisance the United States is--the classic example being that with 5 percent of the world's population, we burn 25 percent of the world's oil--we're far less reckless with mercury, emitting about 2 to 3 percent of the world's whopping total of 4,400 to 7,500 tons a year. Unfortunately, this can't be dismissed as somebody else's issue, because mercury vapor and compounds can drift thousands of miles in the atmosphere. So when we buy imported goods made in countries with lax emissions standards, we might be poisoning ourselves and the unfortunate residents of those nations. Plus, when we ship tons of our worn-out, mercury-containing products overseas for recycling, we're offshoring pollution along with jobs. It's clear that the whole world needs strict limits on mercury.
Environmentally,
Mr. Green

Hey Mr. Green,
I know organically grown cotton is better for the environment, but is there any difference in the fabric? Do the pesticides wash out in the laundry? --April in Redlands, California

Mr. Green answers:
The clothes shoppers buy don't have pesticides in them, but the clothes farmworkers wear home from the fields might. Conventional cotton growing requires a lot of poison--as much as 25 percent of the insecticides applied to all crops--so organic cotton, which is grown with minimal pesticides and governed under the same standards as organic food, is safer for farmers and the environment. Some organic cotton processors also use natural dyes--another plus. The major minus is a higher price. But if people are willing to shell out for a big name on a little label, they should be able to spend more on fashion that's lighter on the earth. For more information, visit aboutorganiccotton.org.

Perverts, Public Safety, and the Planet

Hey Mr. Green,
In your answer to Sue regarding the school bus situation, you stated that "if I were running the district with my green iron fist, I'd require all those lazy, pampered kids to walk or bike to school, like in the old days." It's a nice sentiment but not practical in today's world. There are too many child predators waiting for this opportunity. In my neighborhood alone, there were three known attempts of men trying to lure or drag children into their cars just this past year. Each child was either walking alone or with a friend home from school or, in one instance, playing in front of her own house. Although I wish we lived in a world where kids could walk or bike to and from school without the threat of being accosted, I would not feel comfortable letting my child do this. For exercise, children should try sports or dance in a safe environment. —Tamara in Flushing, New York

Hey Mr. Green,
Just a comment regarding your advice that children should walk to school. Rather than excoriating these "lazy" kids, let's remember the hazards they face in many suburbs—lack of sidewalks, lack of pedestrian crossings, and excessive traffic with its attendant lack of controls. These deficiencies would put too many kids at risk of serious injury or death, especially given the impulsiveness of youths. Let's get our local governments to supply the needed upgrades so that kids can walk or bike again, safely. —Joan in Fairfax, Virginia

Mr. Green answers:
Hey Tamara and Joan,
I'm becoming such a crusty geezer that I need to hear such objections. Even granting my opinion that kids today are lazy and overprotected, you're right: The streets should be made tolerably safe for them—and for us grown-ups. Many adults would gladly ride bicycles, but they're scared stiff by traffic, and I don't blame them. I personally know a half dozen people who have been very seriously injured because they were hit by a vehicle or mugger while riding. I recently met a young woman who will not use a bike any longer because she was "doored" by someone getting out of a car. Though I've been doored too, I certainly don't expect everybody to hop back on a bike after such a harrowing episode.

But fear begets fear. The fact that so few people are out on the sidewalks and streets in the first place encourages predators and lets dangerous drivers rip along without being detected. So it becomes a classic catch-22: We keep our kids and ourselves off the streets because we're scared, and then the streets become scarier because nobody's on them. We burn billions of gallons of extra gas inside our vehicular fortresses while the pervs patrol.

A partial solution would be to limit traffic and create truly safe bike lanes and walking paths. I've seen this work in some cities in Europe, where you'll find old guys pedaling bikes while holding their canes over the handlebars, old women tooling about with basketfuls of cargo, and the younger set rolling along while talking on their cell phones. So if you're looking for a worthy way to restore a measure of civilization to our car-menaced world, this might be the campaign to take on.

Environmentally,
Mr. Green

Overflowing With Water Tidbits

Mr. Green's November/December print column about bottled versus tap water barely skimmed the, um, surface of this complex topic. Though he noted that tap water is not tested as often for lead, it's worth adding that health risks can be minimized by using only cold water for cooking or drinking—and letting it run for a while first. And while Mr. Green briefly alluded to the dangers of well water, which has a greater likelihood of containing arsenic and contaminants from agricultural chemicals, he'd also like to share this link to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's recommendation of testing all well water. Water conservation is a topic for another day, but those interested might enjoy a short interview in the same Sierra issue with the cofounder of the Greywater Guerrillas, a group that helps people install their own systems for reusing sink water on their yards.

Hey Mr. Green,
I drive a Prius, I turn off lights when I'm not in a room, I take short showers, and I otherwise try to do my part to conserve energy and avoid creating excess greenhouse gases. However, mandating 100 percent use of fluorescent lighting (or at least banning incandescents) is a misguided idea.

I use compact fluorescents in many areas of my home. However, they are useless for referencing the color photos I print, for selecting clothing, and (for women, primarily) for applying makeup that will look good outdoors or in daylight-illuminated rooms. Fluorescent lamps provide highly skewed color references because even with complex phosphors, they are not full-spectrum lights.

Banning incandescents, which are full spectrum, would create a serious problem in many types of industry and retail environments. Beyond that, fluorescents flicker, typically at 120 Hz, and this can stop or change the visual impression of rotating parts. In industry or even in a hobby shop, this can cause disastrous results. Horrific injuries can occur when someone thinks a part is stopped and it's actually still rotating. Since incandescent lamps glow continuously, they don't cause this problem.

Also, a significant percentage of the population suffers from various visual- or brain-processing symptoms that are exacerbated by the harsh colors and flicker of fluorescent lamps. Those who are afflicted with scotopic sensitivity syndrome (Irlen syndrome), some forms of epilepsy, and so forth will have no way to avoid the triggering effect if they are unable to easily procure standard incandescent lamps. In short, encourage use of compact fluorescents, offer financial incentives, and educate, but do not legislate against an alternative that has many safety and quality-of-life benefits for various populations and pursuits. --Gary Davis in Hidden Hills, California

Hey Gary,
Thanks for raising some interesting points. Even advocates for banning incandescents realize that these energy-hogging bulbs may have some usefulness. In announcing his country's ban, the Australian minister for the environment and water resources noted that "special-needs areas, such as medical lighting and oven lights, will be taken into consideration."

And while early CFLs did tend to cast a ghastly pall, they're now available in a range of brightness levels and hues, including full-spectrum versions.
Environmentally,
Mr. Green